The death of Victoria Climbie in 2000 as a result of brutality and neglect, and the subsequent Laming Inquiry, exposed the urgent need for an overhaul of children's services to ensure greater multi-agency working and prevent similar tragedies. The Green Paper, Every child matters, maps out how children's services could be better co-ordinated, by bringing together education and children's social services. But some local authorities have pre-empted the Government proposals down this route.
'We do not see teachers in the red corner and social workers in the blue corner. We have come to the view that in the middle of the ring are children and we are all working with them.' That is how Bob Wolfson, director of Wiltshire County Council's Children, Education and Libraries department, explains the rationale behind the recently-merged department to create a body more attuned to children's needs.
He says, 'Councillors knew they were dealing with the same youngsters under special needs, and under social services and education welfare. But people weren't talking enough. It made no sense and was not a good use of resources.
'We didn't predefine what needed to be done, as we want practitioners to tell us what to do once they are talking to each other.'
Wiltshire, along with Hertfordshire County Council and Brighton and Hove City Council, are singled out in the Green Paper as trailblazers when it comes to integrating services, having merged education and children's social services.
But while the Government has not prescribed such a merger as a recipe for all councils, the Local Government Association has warned against any move to 'enforced structural change', which it says 'would undermine years of good work in most authorities'.
The Vale of Glamorgan council was criticised by the Social Services Inspectorate for Wales in 2000 for putting children at risk shortly after merging social services and education. The inspectors said this had 'brought few benefits'.
Pat Hawkes, chair of Brighton and Hove's Children, Families and Schools committee and a former teacher, recalls that an SSI inspection team initially was critical of her authority's efforts to draw together children's services.
'They thought we had thrown everything together too fast, but the next time they came they could see that we were developing our children's centres, and our child protection procedures were bedding in,' she says.
Brighton and Hove is developing a purpose-built Sure Start children's centre in Hollingdean. It is mirroring national policy by appointing its own children's commissioner, and it has been chosen as one of the pilots for children's trusts - a vehicle that, in the long term, the Government hopes will consolidate the integration of services.
Pat Hawkes says, 'We set up the board last week with representatives from the Primary Care Trust (PCT). It means that if we have, for example, a child with a hearing problem, we would commission the PCT to bring their hearing service into the trust, hopefully delivered from an extended school. The child's parents would not have to traipse from one agency to another. It would all be co-ordinated.'
Pat Wills, national chair of Early Education and headteacher of Claremont Primary School in Blackpool, welcomes the prospect of extended schools as a focus for services, because it will 'allow teachers to teach'.
She explains, 'Ours is an extended school already in all but name. We are open from 8am to 6pm 50 weeks of the year, and we have an early excellence centre with full daycare on site. While they are managed by teachers and the curriculum is led by teachers, the actual care side and the logistics of homework clubs and holiday playschemes are taken on by people who are not teachers.
'This means the teachers know that the children's other needs are being supported. In the past teachers used to be social workers and substitute parents. Now they can do the thing they are paid to do knowing that there is a raft of other professionals dealing with attendance issues, punctuality, a family's nutritional needs.'
She fully supports the merging of education and children's social services.
'Currently we are funded through the local education department and I have to be careful with budgets when I employ school counsellors. The local authority has been sympathetic to us because they see it helps attainment.'
She hopes bringing these departments together will also help rationalise the laborious process of making multiple bids to a plethora of different funding streams.
At Mountpleasant Primary School in Dudley, headteacher Gail Bedford used lottery money four years ago to set up a children's centre for families with young children. But without ongoing funding she relies on the goodwill of health visitors and social workers who come to the school for no pay.
She says, 'We may get alerted to family difficulties by health visitors, information we would not know about in school as there is no official mechanism for communication between health visitors and schools. I would welcome the opportunity for consistent multi-agency working at the school.'
That is already in place in Hertfordshire, where integrated teams of social workers, educational psychologists and welfare officers are now attached to schools.
But acting chief executive Caroline Tapster says, 'The amount of organisational change required should not be underestimated. People have to think through the elements of the Green Paper that are most urgent, but realise that it will take time, effort and money.'
Bob Wolfson believes there are cultural issues that must be handled sensitively, such as the conditions of service and salaries of staff. 'If you just push people together and then say "you're all one now", it isn't going to work. But I am absolutely convinced that a single leadership and management strand make it a great deal more likely that an integrated department will succeed in difficult areas.
'The prospect of information sharing, common training on child protection and teams of people working more closely will lead to earlier identification and resolution of child welfare issues, and prevent some of the appalling excesses we know happen in this country.'
CONSULTATION PROCESS
* If you want to take part in the consultation process on the Green Paper, you can download response forms from www.dfes.gov.uk/everychildmatters.
Completed questionnaires and other responses, which must be submitted by 1 December 2003, should be sent by post to Children's Green Paper, Consultation Unit, Level 1, Area B, Castle View House, East Lane, Runcorn, WA7 2GJ or by e-mail to: Consultation1. CHILDRENSGP@dfes.gsi.gov
GREEN PAPER MAIN PROPOSALS
Extended schools - a hub for integrated services
The Government wants a network of 'full service extended schools', with at least one in every local education authority in England by 2006. They will offer services including childcare, study support, family and lifelong learning, health and social care, parenting support, sports and arts facilities and access to IT. By 2006 all LEAs will be funded to employ school-based managers or LEA co-ordinators to develop more services for children on school premises.
Accountability - nationally and locally
The Government believes integrating services requires structural change and new posts to ensure they are implemented, including:
* An independent Children's Commissioner
* A director of children's services accountable for local authority education and children's social services, who would also oversee other services delegated to the local authority. This is expected to lead to a single children's department in most authorities, but the Government is not insisting on this
* A lead council member for children
* In the longer term, greater service integration through the creation of children's trusts.
Early intervention and effective protection
Improved information gathering between agencies is reckoned to be the key to early intervention and effective child protection. The aim would be to ensure local authorities have a list of children in their area, a list of services they have had contact with, and the contact details of relevant professionals, including their GP. This information hub could allow professionals to flag up concerns at an early stage.
The Government also proposes:
* A 1m pilot of 'Identification, Referral and Tracking' trailblazers to test out information sharing systems
* To remove barriers to electronic information sharing, with each child having a unique identity number
* A common assessment framework to allow core information to follow a child between services
* One professional to take the lead in cases where children are known to more than one agency
* Integrating professionals through multidisciplinary teams
* Co-locating multidisciplinary teams in and around schools and Sure Start Children's Centres
* Local Safeguarding Children's Boards will replace Area Child Protection Committees.
Support for parents and carers
Universal parenting services could involve:
* A national helpline or 'virtual advice bureau for parents'
* Information meetings for parents at key points in their children's lives
* Family learning programmes to promote better communication between school and parents
* Support programmes for fathers as well as mothers
* Childcare, early years education, social care and school working more closely with parents to show them how they can help their child's development
* Targeted and specialist support to parents of children requiring additional support
* A parenting fund of 25m over the next three years.
The workforce
* A Children's Workforce Unit, within the DfES, will develop a pay and workforce strategy for those working with children, designed to improve their skills and effectiveness
* The unit will establish a Sector Skills Council for Children and Young People's Services to deliver the strategy.